Police Identification Procedures: A Time for Change

AuthorLt. Kenneth Patenaude
PositionDetective/Lieutenant
Pages415-420

Page 415

    Detective/Lieutenant, Northampton Police Department, 29 Center St., Northampton, MA 01060. A twenty-eight year veteran and departmental hostage negotiator with over twenty years of supervisory experience. He has sixteen years of detective bureau experience and has been commander for the past thirteen years. Lt. Patenaude holds a Master's Degree in Criminal Justice Administration.

Lt. Patenaude has been recognized for his outstanding service as a member of the National Institute for Justice, Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence. He also played a key role in developing Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement, a guide on how to conduct criminal investigation interviews, showups, and lineups. Lt. Patenaude is a published author and co-author of the eyewitness evidence instructional guide and training manual, as well as an eyewitness evidence article, and various departmental policies for the Northampton Police Department.

Lt. Patenaude has lectured for numerous criminal justice agencies and organizations across the country. He has been invited to speak for a number of District Attorney's offices, law enforcement agencies, as well as the Northampton Criminal Public Defense Attorney's office. Lecture topics have included domestic violence, crime scene protection, Massachusetts Firearms Laws and most extensively on eyewitness evidence procedures.

In the spring of 2004, I received a phone call from a representative of the New York Innocence Project, a group of lawyers and law students dedicated to helping those unjustly convicted in criminal court. As Detective Bureau Commander for the Northampton Police Department in Massachusetts, this would seem to be an unusual or surprising phone call-considering it was coming from the "dark side," a.k.a., defense counsel. After brief introductions, I was asked to prepare a short presentation about my experiences with the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence (TWG),1 and how those experiences led to the incorporation of new eyewitness evidence procedures within the Northampton Police Department.

In 1998,1 was invited by the Department of Justice to work with a small group of criminal justice professionals to develop improved procedures for the collection and handling of eyewitness evidence. The goalPage 416 was to generate more accurate and reliable eyewitness evidence for evaluation by the criminal justice community. The project was inspired by recent cases in which DNA evidence was used to overturn convictions that were based primarily on eyewitness evidence. The project culminated in the NIJ publication, Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement2(NIJ Guide) and its accompanying training manual, Eyewitness Evidence: A Trainer's Manual for Law Enforcement3 (NIJ Trainer's Manual).

Throughout my career as an investigator, I treated eyewitness accounts...

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